


A Brief Engagement

by sceal



Category: Devil's Cub - Georgette Heyer
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Happy Ending, Masturbation, Possessive Behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 02:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16986132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sceal/pseuds/sceal
Summary: She would show. If she didn’t Vidal would fetch her from the General’s home. If he was forced to resort to such vulgarity, they would spend the rest of their lives on the Continent fleeing his father, the Duke of Avon.Honour be damned, Mary would be his.





	A Brief Engagement

“It is terribly _déclassé_ to be faithful to one’s husband,” Bertrand teased.

“You odious flirt!” Juliana said.

Mr Comyn frowned. “I will thank you for not speaking in that fashion to my wife.”

Bertrand grinned at Juliana. “He amuses me. My dearest Juliana, when you tire of his _simplicité_ , I will remain as ever, your loyal servant.”

Only after Juliana’s new husband, Mr Comyn, offered her an appraising glance did she surreptitiously wink at a departing Bertrand.

Lord Vidal ignored his cousins’ antics. He spared a sympathetic thought for the staid Mr Comyn who had made the dubious decision to marry into the family and saddle himself with the glittering Juliana.

Lord Vidal mostly waited in irritation for Miss Mary Challoner to appear at Mme de Saint-Vire’s party. The Marquis had arrived early to spare Miss Challoner having to wait for his attentions, and belatedly wished that she had extended him the same courtesy, though he could not blame her for failing to anticipate that he would be unfashionably prompt.

They were to be wed at the Embassy within the week. This would be their first and only public appearance to establish the ruse that they were secretly affianced. His parents and the General had found other ways to occupy themselves to support the fabrication that they disapproved of the purported misalliance.

She would show. If she didn’t Vidal would fetch her from the General’s home. If he was forced to resort to such vulgarity, they would spend the rest of their lives on the Continent fleeing his father, the Duke of Avon.

Honour be damned, Mary would be his.

“Vidal,” Juliana teased, “cease glaring at _tante_ ’s guests like you wish to horsewhip them.”

“Would you like to be the first, Ju?” Vidal said.

Juliana retreated to her husband’s side. “He is in an intolerable mood. He has no one to blame but himself if Miss Challoner runs away again.”

“My wife jests,” Mr Comyn quickly interjected.

The subject of Miss Challoney was the surest way to rouse Vidal’s notorious temper. Vidal had recently strangled and duelled Mr Comyn at sword point, with the full intention of committing murder, on her account.

Mr Comyn wished for Miss Challoner’s prompt arrival.

Foolishly embolded by his defense, Juliana continued. “ _Non, je suis parfaitement sérieuse. Si Mademoiselle Challoner a un grain de bon sens, elle est déjà de retour en Angleterre_.”

Vidal not for the first time consigned Juliana to the devil. Henceforth Mary would be kept well away from her influence, perhaps he would permit a reunion when she was safely increasing with his third babe.

“I only understood the words ‘Miss Challoner’ and ‘England,’” Mr Comyn said. “Which is enough to lead me to remind you that Juliana is your dear cousin, and only just recovering from our desperate elopement.”

Vidal lifted his quizzing glass and returned his attention to the entrance of the ballroom. Many among the crowd took note of the direction of the dazzling Marquis’s gaze, unsure whether he was anxious to make a quick exit or awaiting the arrival of a famed beauty.

Vidal’s impatience was reaching dangerous levels. If she did not show within the next hour another kidnapping would be de rigueur. It seems his little Mary was in need of a refresher on the importance of cleaving onto her husband.

Not a moment too soon Miss Challoner was announced into the room to nary a ripple of notice from the crowd. A small, sombrely dressed lady placidly descended the staircase, escorted by her abigail.

The game had begun.

“Ah, _enfin_ , she is here!” Juliana breathed.

Cousin Bertrand reentered their circle as Juliana rushed off to greet her friend.

“But who is this?” the Vicomte said, with a faint spark of prurient interest.

Bertrand’s fate was instantly settled. Dominic would shortly make use of the set of pistols he kept in his carriage.

Bertrand, foolishly at ease in his own parents’ residence, unaware of Vidal’s murderous calm and Mr Comyn’s alarmed regard, continued his appraisal of the new arrival. “She doesn’t hold a candle to l’ _incomparable_ Juliana but she is certainly tolerable. And there is something about the way she stands so straight that makes a man want to lay her on her back.”

“She is to be my wife,” Vidal said.

“And I am a to be a priest, dedicating my life to _le seigneur_ and celibacy.” Bertrand turned to him with an amused twinkle which, upon meeting Vidal’s glacial stare, he quickly lost.

“Vidal,” Mr. Comyn heroically interjected. “I beg you not to act rashly.”

“The matter is settled,” Vidal said.

The Vicomte paled. “Pardon my impertinence! I am all felicitations! I did not realise your affections were thus engaged. Not a word did I hear of this match!”

“You will meet me at dawn with your second,” Vidal said in a bored tone.

“Dominic! Surely you cannot mean-! I am your cousin,” Bertrand pleaded.

“If such a duel takes place, you will be forced anew to flee the country, and Miss Challoner forced to follow with you,” Mr Comyn stated.

“Unquestionably.” They would settle in Italy. Mary would grow accustomed to the sunshine and the quaint habits of the locals.

The Vicomte de Valmé looked on the verge of fainting. He would soon find solace in eternal rest. Lord Vidal withdrew a scented handkerchief from his person and courteously delivered it to his cousin.

Bertrand accepted it limply. “Please spare me!”

“Compose yourself,” Vidal said coldly as Mary and Juliana drew near.

“Betrand, Vidal, Frederick, meet Miss Mary Challoner, my closest friend from the seminary!” Juliana’s smile fell as she observed the tension between her cousins.

“I have already had the pleasure,” Vidal said, clasping Mary’s small hand and giving it a kiss.

“You don’t say.” Juliana fancied herself an actress on the stage. “A fascinating story, I am sure.”

“My Lord.” Mary removed her hand from his and curtsied. “Congratulations on your nuptials, Mr and Mrs Comyn.”

“Thank you,” Mr Comyn said.

“I am honoured to make your acquaintance,” Bertrand said weakly.

The conversation continued in such a polite if stilted manner, until Vidal fettered Mary away to make the round of introductions. She greeted the spinster aunts, jealous debutantes and unrepentant rakes with the same blend of solicitous interest and distinguished reserve. Vidal approved of her manner.

She appeared indifferent to the whispers that followed in their wake, only alluding to them as she looked up at him fondly during their second consecutive dance.

“You have succeeded too well in convincing Paris of your regard,” Miss Challoner said. “Fortunately our wedding is within a week.”

“Do not fret,” Vidal said. “Nothing could keep me from it.”

“Even a duel with Bertrand?”

Vidal focused on his footwork to avoid missing a step.

At times her powers of penetration reminded him of his father. “And how would you be aware of that?”

“What if I asked you not to do it?”

“I will be fine,” Vidal said.

“Of that I have no doubt,” Mary said. “But I should hardly like our wedding to be shadowed by the murder of your cousin.”

“It won’t be,” Vidal said. “Bertrand will not be missed.”

“Your father will be furious and your mother upset.”

“Regrettably.”

Mary’s gaze implored his. “Will nothing change your mind?”

“He is of no consequence,” Vidal said. “Let’s not discuss it further.”

“You are right. It is hardly a wife’s place to intervene in her husband’s private affairs.”

Vidal stared at her suspiciously, but her expression remain composed if a trifle subdued.

“Quite,” he said.

They finished the rest of their dance in silence. Throughout the rest of the evening, Vidal stayed by her side and glowered at any man who dared to approach her. He repeatedly caught her staring pensively into the darkness outside, as if weighing a great matter.

He was almost moved to reassure her that in the future, as a married man, he would endeavour to curb his impetuousness if only to keep that frown from her brow. But nothing could induce him to go back on his word.

He believed the issue to be settled and indeed she did not return to it until much later in the evening.

They had somehow been manoeuvred into a secluded alcove when her small hand clutched his arm. Her cheeks were flushed a dark red and her gaze was fixed on his cravat.

“Mary, what is the matter?”

“At the time of your duel with Bertrand,” Mary began haltingly, “I will be in my bedchamber on the second floor, with a lit candle.”

Vidal did not at first comprehend her discomfiture. “You will be praying for me?”

Mary closed her eyes but then raised them bravely to his. “It is not uncommon for affianced couples to share an unchaperoned moment.”

Understanding struck.

His virginal bride, to prevent the murder of his cousin, was willing to sacrifice her honour before the wedding night.

Vidal was momentarily stunned, though his emotions quickly settled.

Mary recoiled from his dark expression.

“You overestimate your charms,” Vidal said harshly. “Shortly you will be mine body and soul. I can wait.”

She would be relieved of the foolish notion that he was a man who could be led by his cock. He detested women who resorted to such tricks.

Mary removed her hand from his arm and her face returned to its natural colour.

Vidal was uneasy with her apparent calm but too incensed to regret his words.

“You are more knowledgeable than I,” she said softly so that he had to lean down to hear her. “As you duel Bertrand, I will seek to increase that knowledge. On my back.”

Dominic’s rage darkened incommensurately. Mary would never betray him with another man, but the suggestion of it was enough to bring him to a dangerously violent state. Her precise repetition of Bertrand’s ribald phrasing confirmed that either Comyn or Bertrand had confided in his betrothed, no doubt in the scant handful of times he had ventured from her side to fetch her refreshments. “I can kill two men tonight.”

“Forgive me,” Mary said. “In my inexperience I misspoke. I may be revealing myself to you as an unnatural woman, but I am capable of -er increasing my knowledge- on my own. With this very hand.”

Mary returned the aforementioned member to his arm. Dominic’s mind, seared to a white hot blankness, considered the fine digits on the sleeve of his coat.

She spoke of pleasuring herself. With those dainty little fingers she touched her cunt and brought herself off. She would do so tonight, in her candlelit bedroom on the second floor.

Dominic put his hand over hers. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her face.

“Have I shocked you?” Mary whispered shakily.

“Please, I beg of you, be silent.”

The Marquis lead his fiancee on a steady path to the exit.

“Dominic!” Mary said. “We cannot leave together.”

“I have been informed on good authority that it is common for a betrothed couple to spend time unchaperoned.”

“No one knows we are betrothed, you fiend!”

“You will be my wife within the week. They will know then.” Society would rightly assume that he had stolen her virtue before their wedding, but he was past caring.

“I am ruined.”

“You are mine.”

“If you do not release me, I will shoot you again,” Mary said.

Vidal paused. Her furious threat belatedly awakened his conscience.

He deposited her with Juliana. “No one is to dance with her unless you wish them dead. She has a headache and is leaving shortly.”

“Vidal, you are behaving like a barbarian!” Juliana said. “Frederick has told me everything. Bertrand is a _roué_ , you must ignore what he says. Promise to shoot wide.”

Vidal had never in his life shot wide.

Juliana began to cry her frustration. “Oh you are _méchant, ignoble_! There is no talking to you. Léonie will have your head.”

His mother had spoiled him terribly. She would forgive him anything.

Mary eyed him apprehensively. Well she should.

“ _À plus tard_ ,” Dominic said, briefly kissing her hand before departing.

-

Dominic was a beast. Mary lit the candle by her bedroom window, her white nightgown in the reflection making her appear like a ghost. His possessiveness and murderous jealousy would wane once they were married, but for now he treated her like a new toy he refused to share with the other little boys.

Though men did not deserve to die simply because they could not curb their lascivious tongues where the better sex were concerned, Mary would not have felt moved to resort to such drastic measures on behalf of anyone except a family member.

She knew Dominic. Marriage would not change him and she had no intention of promising him sinful favours every time he felt the urge to kill a man.

In fact he better have cherished this night for it would be the only time she behaved so unwomanly as to broach the subject of conjugal visits. Let alone reveal that she at times partook in wanton behaviour!

Mary took a sip of ratafia to steady her nerves.

She hoped the cursed man would break into her room soon. If the duel took place, the Duke and Duchess would be rightfully disappointed with her for being the cause of this absurd event. The lineage of Avons was filled with wild and dark exploits but she couldn’t imagine that anyone else in the genealogical tree had murdered a cousin over so slight an insult.

Besides the grief this folly would bring to the family, there was the unlikely chance that Vidal and not Bertrand would be fatally injured.

It was all a terrible mess.

Pragmatically, it was no longer necessary to secure her virtue as her chastity had already accomplished its purpose of granting her a husband. She had never thought herself to be whorish, even when she occasionally conceded to the demands of her body.

Still, she worried that Dominic would treat her differently after tonight. He had originally only felt compelled to wed her because she was an untouched maid. He gifted his lady loves with every luxury, but certainly would never greet one down the aisle.

If Dominic treated her poorly because of her forwardness, Mary vowed, she would run off to a nunnery and he could return to his lady loves. If he could not cherish his wife he did not deserve to keep her. He was hardly entering into this marriage as an untouched virgin himself.

Of course it was equally likely that Dominic had rejected her offer and was currently preparing his pistols.

-

In a clearing at an undisclosed location, Bertrand and his second awaited the arrival of Vidal. Having prematurely quit the ball, Bertrand had tried in vain to locate the Duke and Duchess of Avon with the hopes that they alone could change their hot-tempered son’s mind.

Unsuccessful, he had hastily set his affairs in order and gotten outrageously drunk.

Bertrand stared death in the face as the ducal carriage approached, its dark horses racing toward him at an ungodly pace. Out stepped Mr Comyn, with a missive.

“Lord Vidal sends his regards and begs you to pardon his absence,” Mr Comyn said.

“He has not come?” Bertrand dared to hope, tearing open the ducal seal.

_My thanks for the early wedding present of your country estate._

Bertrand gladly accepted the stipulation and fell to the ground sobbing his relief.

-

Mary must have dozed off for she awoke to a man slipping through her bedroom window in the twilight hours.

“Forgive me for taking so long to reach you,” Dominic said.

“You did not kill him?”

“I have kept you up too late.” Dominic rubbed her cheek. “I did not touch a hair on his witless head.”

Mary buried her face in his chest, grateful that a calamity had been avoided. “You are too bloodthirsty.”

“No doubt,” Dominic said. “Now, a certain scene was promised to me.”

Mary withdrew in stunned silence. “You cannot mean to insist I fulfil my promise!”

Dominic shook his head. “It is hardly sportsmanlike of you to rescind your offer.”

“I do not care.”

“Mary Challoner you are not a liar.”

“You are despicable.”

“Nevertheless.”

“I could get you drunk until you are incapacitated.”

Dominic chuckled. “There is not enough ratafia in the world. Fret not, I am quite alert.”

Mary grew quietly suspicious that he was referring to something naughty. She had overheard bawdy jokes throughout the years and knew that liquor could reduce a man’s prowess.

Mary rose and extinguished the candle. The brightening dawn softly illuminated the scene, so Mary shut the curtains.

Dominic chuckled. “So demure for a woman who brazenly seduced me.”

“It was for a noble cause.”

Dominic snorted. “Never in his life has Bertrand been referred to thus.”

“I will keep my nightgown on.”

“Please do not, though Bertrand’s life is spared irregardless of whether you remove your nightgown,” he said.

That reassurance somehow made it harder to undress. With the fiction that he was forcing her hand, and that she was sacrificing herself for a noble cause, she could convince herself that she was not a slut.

“You promise not to hate me?”

“I’ve loved you since you shot me,” Dominic said. “Nothing you do could induce me to hate you.”

Mary courageously removed her nightgown. He would not be able to see anything anyways.

She returned to her bed in the darkness. She lied down beneath the covers, placed her hand between her legs and closed her eyes, striving to pretend that she was alone so that she could be calm enough to focus. In the steady quiet her thoughts gradually fled until she could picture a familiar scene.

Dominic, lying in a bed, a difficult patient who had to be coerced to maintain his bed rest with the most audacious methods.

Her body grew feverishly hot as she tended to her imaginary patient with care and precision. The scene rapidly led to its natural conclusion, the heat within her coiling tighter as an imaginary Dominic tempted her to join him in bed.

His imaginary hands barely landed on her _derrière_ before the tension released with a starling ferocity. Her toes curled into the mattress, her back arched, and she involuntarily gasped. She cupped her tender sex in the aftermath, as if to contain it.

“What were you thinking of?” the real Dominic said, his voice shockingly close.

“It does not concern you,” Mary whispered, trying to be unashamed.

“It damn well should.”

“Do not swear.”

“When you are my wife I will teach you to be loud. And to take your time. There will be other lessons as well. You will enjoy them.”

Dominic opened the curtain, flooding the room with light.

“I will undress now,” Dominic said. “Close your eyes if you wish.”

Mary shut them tight, only opening them when he had joined her under the covers.

“You will enjoy this, my sweet.” He spread her legs, placing himself between them.

-

The Duke of Avon cornered his son at the wedding reception.

“I hear a duel with Bertrand was avoided?” Avon said.

“It is of no consequence,” Dominic said.

“I am glad Mary has a calming influence.”

Dominic kept his face carefully blank, refusing to rise to his father’s bait. “Barely wed and I am already uxorious.”

The Duke glanced at Léonie. “It is an Avon trait. You have this week scaled into your last bedroom, I hope?”

Vidal cringed. His father was the devil himself. “Yes, Sir.”


End file.
